Oracle OpenWorld 2007 Tidbits

There were no major announcements around HCM, but there were some important learnings for customers at the conference:

More than 400 customers have either upgraded or are in the process upgrading to version 9.0 of PeopleSoft HCM according to Oracle

Version 9.1 of PeopleSoft HCM is expected in Q4 of 2008. The major theme for the release is improving the talent management capabilities (no big surprise). Beyond talent management, other enhancements include support for multiple encumbrances in public sector, local payroll support in additional countries, and expanded use of the approval/delegation engine

Version 12 of Oracle E-Business Suite HCM has one live customer

Oracle demonstrated the Fusion Compensation Workbench as an example of the changes that they were making for Fusion. Oracle showed the use of PeopleSoft-like Tree functionality within a data grid to allow expanding and contracting of items within the grid for example

Gartner is working on an Event note for the whole conference (to which I am contributing). There will be more details as well as well as more analysis in that research note. I will post a link (subscription required) when it is published. I did not get a chance to see too many user presentations at the conference, but I did get a chance to speak with a number of customers. Regardless of which product line, the message was pretty much the same. Talent management was on the top of the agenda for 2008 investments.